High-profile members of New York’s legal community are seeking to become amici parties in a criminal case that addresses the issue of jury instructions on cross-racial eyewitness identification, which is set for arguments before the state Court of Appeals next month.
The proposed parties, which include former prosecutors and judges, say that the jury in the case of Otis Boone—a black man convicted of first-degree robbery in 2012 based on the identification of two white victims—should have been instructed on the tendency of individuals to identify members of their own race better than members of other races.
